Word Choice
by Quill and Saber
Summary: Hinata thinks about how she is described. Rated for dark themes.


**Word Choice**

**I do not own Naruto (and I haven't read past vol. 28). I'd take Akamaru, though, if Kiba doesn't want him anymore.**

_This can be one-sided NejiHina if you look at it in the right way. If you don't like that pairing, it can be viewed as platonic. I like my stuff to be flexible._

_Before you get all grossed out at the incest factor (if you see it that way), let me clue you in on something. You probably know the Egyptian royals were ridiculously inbred. That was because only the members of the royal family had the "divine ancestry" genes, and they wanted to keep the "divine ancestry" in the royal family and not pollute their gene pool with human ancestry. Inbreeding went out of style with early 20th century royals, so to speak, when it was discovered that the problems (e.g. hemophilia, "tails" from an extended coccyx, various mental problems) were due to rare recessive genes that were getting a chance to display. But if you _know_ for a fact there aren't any funky recessive genes anywhere and you know there's a very useful trait floating around in the gene pool, inbreeding makes sense._

_If you still don't understand me, talk to a dog breeder._

Hinata couldn't stand herself anymore.

She was a sorry excuse for a firstborn. As she was reminded at least four times daily by various people, her sister was far superior, and even her sister was a candle flame to her cousin Neji's sun-like brilliance. It wouldn't hurt so much if it were only her family—branch and main house—who found it their duty to make her deficiency known to her, but even her teammates would say things, sometimes accidentally, which made her aware again of how pathetic she was.

_A loser_, her father had said.

_Unworthy_, the elders had said.

_Weak, pitiful, a liability_. The words piled up in her brain. She tried as hard as she could to forget them, pushing them into a corner of her mind, compacting them as tightly as she could. Still they managed to spill back out at her. _Disgraceful, shameful, wretched_.

When she trained, she could imagine those words on the targets. _Miserable, a burden._ By the force of her frustration alone, the straw practice dummy was completely mutilated, pieces of dry vegetation floating to the ground around her. But destroying a practice dummy wasn't the same as being able to destroy a fully sentient enemy who most likely was far superior to her. _Inferior, worthless._ That was what she was.

Everyone would be better off if she didn't exist.

That, at least, was something she could do right.

She looked to the kunai in her hand. The sun glinted off its deadly-sharp edge menacingly; this would be final. No one would miss her too terribly, though. Her father would be elated; her team relieved. Even Naruto, who had believed in her, would probably think she did the right thing. _In the way._ She didn't want to be in the way anymore.

She held the kunai poised above her wrist as she tried to remember the most effective way to cut in order to loose blood. She wasn't afraid of bleeding in the least; she'd done enough of it in her life. But she didn't want to make a mistake that would leave her alive but even more useless than before.

WHAM.

She felt herself being knocked off balance, the edge of the kunai barely scraping the inside of her wrist. As a reflex, she tried to stand back up, but something—some_one_—much larger than she was making sure she couldn't move. A callused hand grasped her right wrist, the thumb pulling on the tendons on the back of her hand, forcing her to release her grip. The sharp blade fell to the earth with a small thud.

She recognized those hands. She didn't even need to use her family's kekkei genkai to figure out who was behind her, not like she could have activated it with both hands pinned to the ground. She turned her head around as much as her neck would allow, her frame trembling in fear.

"What are you thinking, you idiot!" The face of her cousin was irate, the veins beside his eyes bulging due to the Byakugan. "If I hadn't been looking for you, you might have died! _Died_, do you hear? Now give me that!" He grabbed the kunai from the ground, throwing it into a tree trunk behind him.

"I-I'm sorry, Neji-niisan," she managed to squeak out as she tried to curl up into a ball.

Neji grabbed her wrists and forced her to stand. "Sorry? _Sorry_? Why on earth would you even _think_ of being so dumb?" The anger in his tone made his voice crackle, frightening Hinata even more.

"I…I was t-trying to get out of the way."

"Hinata, I have never heard anything more stupid in my life." Hinata noticed the dropped honorific; Neji must have been really angry to forget something like that.

"I'm sorry!" she repeated, tears, streaming down her cheeks.

"Swear you won't even think of anything like this ever again, and I mean it!" Hinata's sobs became more erratic when Neji shook her to emphasize his point. "Swear it!"

"I'm sorry—"

"_Swear it!_"

"I swear," she whispered, shaking frantically. Neji was absolutely furious, and she couldn't quite figure out why; that unknown factor alone frightened her. Very little could get her cousin as upset as he was at her at the moment.

"We're going home _now_. If you cooperate, I won't tell your father how utterly brainless you were." He grabbed her right hand and started dragging her back to the Hyuuga compound.

It was then Hinata noticed something. It was very difficult to recognize on account of it being so rare, and it was so well masked one would have to have known the subject his entire life to even detect anything.

Neji was shaking.

Neji was afraid.

Hinata wasn't quite sure why, but the thought comforted her somewhat. The person who was contrasted with her time and time again—_b__rilliant, ruthless, versus slow, merciful_—was afraid of something. And that something was related to her attempting to kill herself. It might have only been as simple as the fear of being punished for not looking after her properly, but the fact that someone was concerned for any reason at all reassured her somewhat.

"N-neji-niisan…"

"What?" He stopped suddenly, turning around to face her.

"I'm sorry I scared you."

She expected him to crush her apology with a statement that he was never afraid, but instead he looked at her, his eyes still hardened by the Byakugan.

"_Never_ scare me like that again. I'll never forgive you if you do."

"I won't," she promised. The statement seemed to carry more weight than the oath she spoke before.

"Good. You have no idea what a waste that would be." His eyes softened into their normal state as the anger started to abate. "Come, we must return to the compound before twilight. Your father will worry."

For once in her life, she couldn't care less if her father worried or not (if he was worried, it would most likely be that she was going to be used by enemy shinobi to reveal the secrets of the Byakugan). Neji had said it would be a _waste_ if she died. That implied that she was worth something alive, even if it was just that Neji wouldn't be punished if she didn't die.

Suddenly, she didn't feel so worthless after all.


End file.
